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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



As Nature Whispers 



BY 

STANTON KIRKHAM DAVIS 

author of 
" Where Dwells the Soul Serene" 



NEW YORK 

THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Windsor Arcade, Fifth Avenue 

1902 



THE" LIBRARY OF 
SCNGrtESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR. If 1902 

Copyright entry 
[CLASS a XXc No. 



COPY 3. 



1^ 



Copyright, 1902, 

by 

Stanton Kirkham Davis. 



Rooney & Otten Printing Co., 114-120 West 30th St., N. Y. 



h 

■ 

? c •- 

Child of Nature, thou wliQ q.rt drawn by love of green 
fields and what lies hidden there, by love of the great sea, 
and of the mountains which lie wrapped about in mys- 
tery; thou to whom the winds are ever as a Voice and 
the sea a Presence, the warbling bluebirds and the 
whispering pines thy solace; who hast turned from the 
beckoning world of illusions only to draw nearer to the 
good heart of mankind by reason of a love that knoweth 
no bounds — this shall be thy reward, that life shall be 
to thee a pastoral and shall retain its sweetness. For 
thee shall ever open new vistas of our common estate; 
beside thee Youth shall ever journey hand in hand. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Exploration 7 

Relationship 19 

The Wild 29 

Magic-Play 41 

Voices 55 



AS NATURE WHISPERS. 



EXPLORATION. 

Child of Nature, let us wander, at our own 
sweet will, through hemlock woods and by the 
sea; across the upland pastures and over the 
mountain trails. Let us dive with the sheldrake 
and loon and the crested grebe. Let us flit 
through the forest with the great horned owl, and 
hurl ourselves down from the heavens with the 
fierce duck-hawk. Let us run over the crust with 
the silver fox, and slide with the otters at their 
play, and leap from the rapids with the beautiful 
trout — a silvery gleam in the sunlight. We shall 
flit in the twilight with the little red bat and the 
whippoorwill, skulk in the marsh-grass with the 
clapper-rail, and stalk on the beach with "the great 
blue heron. 

Child of the magical Eye and the magical Ear, 
come let us roam with the wings of the morning 
and the heart of love, into the heart and soul of 
it all; and may this our hegira mark an era memo- 
rable for us. We shall shut the door of our cab- 
ins and enter the Hall of the Universe. We shall 
enter the forest and hark to the song of the 
Winds ; wander by the bold rocky shore and hear 
the voice of the Sea. We shall roam over the 



8 As Nature Whispers. 

snows on winter days, and draw round the hearth 
on winter nights and there listen again to the 
voices of the Winds, of the Sea, of the Far-off- 
Time, — in glowing coals, or blazing logs, or drift- 
wood fire. It may come to pass we shall see what 
we have not seen before; may catch some new 
strain; think some heroic thought; may find our 
hearts larger than we supposed; may conclude 
at last the Unknown is within ourselves, — that 
there are the celestial spaces where swing the 
stars in their majestic orbits; that their Summer 
and Winter dwell and await our bidding, and so 
arrive at the root of it all at last and know it for 
what it is. And the stars are symbols, the 
Sun a symbol, the serpent and the dove. There 
is one Voice albeit many voices; one Sun albeit 
many suns; twilight, moonlight, starlight, but 
one Light only. 

We shall spend little time on smooth lawns and 
in well-kept gardens ; still less in libraries ; waste 
no time in listening to small-talk in stuffy draw- 
ing-rooms. Rather shall we listen to the cry of 
the loon and the yap of the fox ; fly overhead in 
the moonlight with the swift wild geese and hear 
the gossip of continents, of Northern wilds and 
Arctic solitudes. The wind shall blow away the 
chaff of our minds and set us vibrating like the 
telegraph harp till we give forth a resonant major 
chord, so bold, so free, so ringing true, that men 
shall pause in their haste and listen, till it sink 



As Nature Whispers. 9 

into their minds, till it warm their hearts, till it 
ring in their ears forevermore. 

We shall sit by the murmuring waters, in 
springtime pastures where little streams me- 
ander slowly over pebbly beds, and little sil- 
very trout dart like playful gleams on those 
sunlit crystal waters that sing so soft, so 
sweet, so low as they ripple, ripple, rip- 
ple, and gurgle, tinkle, gurgle in their plac- 
id little journey. We shall sit amid the sweet- 
scented violets, the little white violets, on the edge 
of the placid brook, lulled by the cadence of the 
softly murmuring waters, the smiling, sunlit 
waters, on these rare days in June. The bubbling 
medley of the bobolink seems but the echo of our 
own exuberant thought ; the skimming of the 
tree swallows its graceful rhythmic flow. Green 
pastures, green pastures, and the blessed peace of 
a loving solitude ; O Elysian fields, O gardens of 
the Hesperides — here do we find you. "Out of a 
full heart and in green pastures did the Poet 
bring you forth. It was there that he found his 
Love, his Fair One, — by the placid stream in the 
golden sunlight. Whether there are violets or 
whether there are daffodils it matters not. All 
the days of my life — sang the Sweet Singer of 
old; aye, throughout one Day of my life, so long 
as I cleave to thee, O Soul of my Soul, shall I 
dwell in peace by the Waters of Life. 

There's never a rattle of wheels nor rush of 



io As Nature Whispers. 

trains, but only the murmuring waters and the 
song of the wren and the bobolink, and the 
hymnlike strain of the thrush floating over the 
meadows from the dogwood on the hillside yon- 
der. The red-bodied gauze-winged dragon- 
flies sun themselves on flat stones, and the bees 
drone in the clover, and the little cabbage and 
sulphur butterflies flutter languidly, while now 
and then a swallowtail or a monarch is blown 
over the stream. There is a frolic of yellow but- 
terflies in one sunny spot ; and the song sparrow 
takes his bath and preens his feathers ; while the 
water-boatmen whirl and swirl in their mazy 
dance on the face of the pool. 

Here shall the Earth-soul whisper us many 
things — hidden meanings, divine purposes, divine 
events yet to be. Ours shall be communion with 
Nature ; no longer shall we be interlopers, no 
longer trespassers. It shall be our privilege to 
look back of the screen of effects. This we call 
Nature is not what we have supposed it to be, — 
it is a very beautiful veil. Who has seen the face 
behind the veil ? This we call Man is not what we 
have supposed it to be, but also a veil, a mask. 
Who has seen behind the mask? The veil we 
name Diversity, but behind the veil is Unity. The 
Masters have ever perceived this ; this has been 
their direction, from diversity to Unity, from the 
veil to the Face, from the apparent to the Real. 

We shall linger by many a rushing stream, but 



As Nature Whispers. n 

the fish we seek is not to be caught with flies ; we 
must bait our hooks with other bait. We shall 
angle in very deep waters and in some rapids, 
and it will take more than the turn of a wrist to 
land our prize. There is in these waters a fish of 
pure gold. Occasionally some few have seen a 
sudden gleam upon the waters and have known it 
was passing. They it is who have changed their 
mode of angling. Genial kindly men always ; 
much given upon a time to consideration of split 
bamboo and lancewood, patent reels and landing 
nets ; now grown indifferent to these, but still 
cherishing affection for the brotherhood of fisher- 
men, still alive to the old comradery ; now seeking 
the fish of pure gold, silently watching the trout at 
the head of the pool with nose up stream that if 
it be possible they may gain some inkling as to 
the whereabouts of the fish they seek. They have 
not grown sour nor exclusive, nor cranky — far 
from it. They have become weary of fishing in 
shallow waters, that is all. They no longer angle 
at the expense of the fish. It has come to them 
that they only played at fishing before ; now they 
would fish in earnest. They are no longer dilet- 
tantes in Nature, in Art, in life, but strong mag- 
netic thinkers; opposers of shams; opposers of 
dilettanteism ; true woodsmen, lovers of Nature; 
lovers of mankind. The woods have won them 
over at last. The woods are genuine; dilettante- 
ism is there poorly nourished. They have seen 



12 As Nature Whispers. 

the gleam upon the waters, how should they be 
content any more with hooking only brook trout ? 
How should they be content with garrulous talk, 
or with being amused? They do not go to the 
woods to pass away the time but to find them- 
selves, to angle for the fish of pure gold. Neither 
do they talk with men to be amused only, but this 
also to find themselves, and to help others find 
themselves. Thenceforth they look men in the 
eye and talk from the heart, and conceal only 
their petty complaints — if such they have. They 
would speak and write to some purpose — not 
merely to please; as trees do not grow to please, 
but they do good to us. 

We shall see as never before the unity of Na- 
ture. Now we see and are glad that the birds 
have attached themselves to man and have or- 
dered their going and their coming according to 
his. Never again shall we claim exclusive right 
to the pasture, the orchard, the ploughed field or 
village elm. The song birds shall share with 
us ; they will pay us in songs. Can we give them 
the worth of their songs? Were not the trouba- 
dours always welcome ? And yet they could sing 
no such blithe songs as the robin and the oriole. 
They are as much in our hearts as in the trees — 
the sweet singers. Neither shall we exclude the 
hawks — good friends of the farmer that they are; 
though he with his rustic notions takes his gun 
to them all. 



As Nature Whispers. 13 

Knight errants shall we be in our walks, seek- 
ing to encounter new impressions in the fields of 
Thought. But let us cross no swords with wind- 
mills nor run down a flock of sheep. Bold hunt- 
ers in turn, but field-glass will suffice for all 
weapon ; the report of a gun indeed would shut 
out all finer strains which ceaselessly play through 
the woods. The smoke gets in the eyes and ef- 
fectually veils all fairer visions. As for traps, 'tis 
the trapper himself is caught first. Our eyes 
must be our trenchant weapons ; we must be 
Argus-eyed and many-eared. Nor is the nose to 
be discredited. It takes some preparation ; much 
training of the eye and ear ; some training of the 
feet, too, that they may tread softly, surely, and 
tirelessly. But nothing avails if the heart is not 
right. We need stout hearts to walk to any pur- 
pose — not so much for the reason of the physiolo- 
gist as for need of love. We must go to the 
woods to see and hear, — not to be heard and seen. 
Hence some suppression of the personality is 
called for that the spirit of the woods may at once 
take possession of us. This requires a certain 
rare culture — is perhaps the most difficult qualifi- 
cation of all. But the subtle impressions thus re- 
ceived have reference to our own inner state; it 
is thus Nature incites to self-exploration — to 
finding ourselves. So does the true art of walking 
consist in being rather than in going. 

There is more to be seen in the woods than 



14 As Nature Whispers. 

trees and rocks and quadrupeds — very much 
more. He has not yet found himself who can see 
but these. He may be a botanist, an ornitholo- 
gist, an athlete, or a sick man trying to get 
warm — but he is not yet able to walk to advan- 
tage ; and Nature will not let him into her secret. 
Something more indeed than rocks and trees and 
birds; he must see the invisible and hear the in- 
audible, for only one so endowed can rightly 
interpret the visible and audible. Argus-eyed 
must he be, but of inner vision far stronger. If 
this is to speak in riddles, it is excuse that trees 
and rocks are riddles, and you and I riddles also. 
The text-books give no answer. Key to the visi- 
ble there is but one, and that the Invisible. Is it 
real, then, this light which shines not on land nor 
sea? It has been very real to the children of 
Nature. It illumines obscure signs and darkest 
corners. By this light they have walked. He 
who sees it not must grope still. Nature has ever 
been to them religion, — the cathedral in which to 
worship the Immanent God. And Love, which 
is the substance of Religion, is the perennial 
spring which has animated and sustained 
them — which sustains us every one, according to 
our realization. 

"Nature is well enough," says the man of af- 
fairs, — "but what have I to do with the invisible ? 
These visible stocks and bonds concern me more." 
Go to, foolish man ! These you can not take with 



As Nature Whispers. 15 

you, and you are soon to depart for this very in- 
visible. Will you not hear something of it now? 
Do not all these things point to the visible as 
fleeting and temporary? And are not you in 
common with all men seeking what to you seems 
real? But for lack of insight you cannot detect 
the Real. Those who have made this their quest 
have learned from Nature the mystery of Unity ; 
to them she is replete with data that bear on the 
destiny of Man and the problem of living. But 
you have no ear for music, you say, and can not 
abide poets. Alas for you, then, for all truth 
comes to us in harmonies, and all facts are but 
the groundwork of poems — though poetry by no 
means implies verse; and life itself when rightly 
lived is a poem. It were well for you who go by 
dead reckoning to hail him who takes his course 
by the sun. There will be corrections to be made 
before you can get your bearings. 

To find ourselves is the main thing, for this is 
to be fortified. There is always a pretender to 
the throne of Reason. We owe it to ourselves for 
one season at least to live free of care and undis- 
turbed by the world, that we may make an honest 
effort at discovering our whereabouts. It would 
seem that only gods and tramps were above care. 
We may choose to be gods if we will. As well 
be tramps as dyspeptics and careworns. Is it 
not enough to die once that we must die every 
time we hear of a new contagion, and think of 



16 As Nature Whispers. 

the poorhouse whenever there is a fall in 
stocks ? 

O ye pale children of Care, dear Nature bids 
you come unto her that you may have rest. She 
offers you her fields, her forests, her smiling 
lakes. In return she asks your hearts — nay, you 
must give this much first in pledge of your good 
faith. You who have lost the zest of life seek 
it again in Nature. Seek there to come to your- 
self that the shackles may be loosed which bind 
you and our beautiful Mother lead you again to 
the Soul. 

What shall it profit us indeed to gain the 
world and lose the perception of the Soul ? That 
is the pearl of price. Cleave to that : sell all for 
that. Straightway we are born a marvellous 
bubble floats before our wondering eyes — and we 
grow old and have not yet made sacrifice enough. 
All our hopes have gone to that. O great Bubble, 
we have sacrificed to thee our youth — we, the 
slaves of the Bubble ; for thee put aside our inno- 
cence. Where now are the iridescent tints which 
lured us through all these years? Alas, thou art 
grown old with us — thou art grown gray and 
forlorn as we. 

But now and again comes a child of Nature 
who is not thus lured. And though the slaves of 
the Bubble rage, yet will he not sacrifice, but 
gently puts them aside. He it is who cherishes the 
Ideal, who carries in his heart the kingdom of 



As Nature Whispers. 17 

God. He it is who shall lisp some syllable, 
speak some magnetic word to the slaves of the 
Bubble lest despair overcome them in that hour 
wherein the great Bubble loses its alluring tints, 
its rainbow hues. Envoy is he from our common 
Mother to her lost children, for though they spurn 
her never does she let them out of her heart alto- 
gether but would gather them about her as the 
partridge gathers her chicks. 

Because of the Ideal which he has cherished he 
has retained his faith. While men were busy get- 
ting shrewdness, he has acquired insight. How 
jaded grows the world while yet Nature is ever 
young. It laughs at faith — lives far from God, 
and itself attests how bitter is the fruit of such 
sowing. It is at last a child shall lead the Na- 
tions, and such a child dear Nature ever whispers 
in the ear. 



RELATIONSHIP. 

In all sufficiency, perhaps, man has dwelt on 
his social relation; not so with his relation 
to Nature, albeit Nature were nothing with- 
out Man, without him, indeed, were a drama 
without a spectator. He is the Eye and 
the Ear. Apparently for his benefit does 
the drama take place. The fly on the 
ceiling and the mouse in the wall pay no heed 
to what takes place on the stage. But in some 
mysterious way Man is educated therein; learns 
at last that Beauty is the moral ground of the 
Universe. And in some equally mysterious way 
he derives character and insight, passing from 
the Seen to the worship of the Unseen by sure 
steps, and is drawn closer and closer to the Center 
of this moral Universe, where all unknown to 
himself he has had his being always. 

Our schooling in Nature is then a homing — 
verily a homeward flight. Ever and forever, 
through all experience, all vicissitude, the ulti- 
mate perception of Truth and Beauty, and the un- 
foldment of Love, we are going home; we are 
drawing to the Center. And some are singing as 
they go — singing in the desert, chanting on the 
mountains. It seems to be out there over the 
waters — this goal ; it seems to be in the winter 
sunset, or yonder on the snowy peaks, or in the 



20 



As Nature Whispers. 



serene light of the evening star, low lying over the 
distant hills. With more surety is it in our hearts, 
where appearance fades into Love; for there is 
solid ground, and somewhere there is the Father- 
land. 

So, then, are we related to Nature; so vitally 
indeed as if invisible bonds linked us to sky and 
sea, to woods and fields. And if you should shut 
out the daylight we would mourn ; if you should 
take from us the flowers we would grieve, as Ra- 
chel for her children ; so do we love our play- 
house and its wondrous scenes and settings ; so 
little do we dream that perhaps we ourselves are 
actor and drama and spectator and all, and con- 
tain the playhouse as well. But because we take 
the birds and flowers into our hearts, and because 
our hearts expand thereby; because Beauty 
awakens in us larger glimpses of Life — so have 
we a certain relation to Nature quite as worthy to 
be considered as any relation we may have to 
society. And though we may never forget our 
fellow man ; never wisely wander so far into the 
woods as to shut out thought of him, we may 
frequently forget — and with considerable benefit 
— his institutions and politics. For so have we 
the more chance of coming to our bearings, and 
of bringing back with us some hopeful message 
from the woods ; a broader sympathy and under- 
standing, perhaps, to these same social relations, 
which are surely in need of some freshening im- 



As Nature Whispers, 21 

pulse, some loving ministry, some whisperings of 
freedom. 

All Nature reflects the hidden Reality, but only 
the open-hearted and clear-eyed are fully aware. 
True, others mark the seasons, the trees and 
flowers and landscapes. But these alone see that 
such frame themselves into a language deeper 
than words ; that they form themselves into sym- 
bols of this Reality. Endless trees grow and fall ; 
countless birds and insects endlessly repeat them- 
selves ; symbols surely of the real and permanent 
Beauty — else why not the self-same leaves and 
trees for good and all ? So also do men come and 
go even as the leaves ; but the real man does not 
come and go — The Soul abides. 

It is, then, full of suggestion, this beloved Na- 
ture; thoughts stream from a leaf and memories 
from a violet, and sudden aspirations come with 
the flight of a bird. 'Tis a work of love to trace 
and interpret this fair symbolism from day to 
day, from season to season, not knowing in what 
moment some revelation will be made. Rich may 
be our reward if we patiently watch, if we study 
the symbol that we may attain to the Real. But 
it must be with the open heart or it is to no pur- 
pose. It is clear that Man, having the divine fac- 
ulty of choice, has very near smothered himself 
with delusions ; that he is befogged and but 
dimly visible, like a schooner off the Banks in 
thick weather. It is only now and then that he 



22 As Nature Whispers. 

looms from his cloud bank and we gain some idea 
of his true proportions. But Nature is undis- 
torted, unobscured by artificiality, and reflects 
more directly, if in inferior degree, the Divine 
Idea. So woodland and pasture afford us data 
bearing on the real nature of Man. Because of 
the silences, then ; because in solitude we may 
more nearly come to ourselves — for this reason 
may we perchance hear that in the woods which 
is inaudible amidst the din of life in the city, and 
be brought nearer to the hearts of men at last. 

And so this exploration is self-exploration after 
all. Man reads his thoughts in the sky and in 
the changeful lights of the meadows, as passing 
clouds are reflected on the opaline surface of a 
soap bubble. And with most men it is a very lit- 
tle journey ; for sheer timidity and lack of 
originality they will not leave the beaten track. 
But with prophet-soul 'tis the Argonaut voyage 
— this interior wandering. There is somewhat at 
the end of his journeyings which lies in no other 
direction and may be attained in no other way. 
It is plain he may not bring home this treasure 
and distribute it among the stay-at-homes, or 
those who only journey in cars and by the time- 
table. He can only say to them : "The way lies 
yonder ; you cannot see by me, you must see for 
yourselves." Now and again one will heed. As for 
the rest they will be as incredulous as were they 
who scoffed at Columbus — "What, a land not on 



As Nature Whispers. 23 

our map — impossible ! " But he offers it not to 
one queen, but to nobility everywhere; — to the 
self-controlled, the aspiring, the sane. 

They alone who percieve the Soul have any 
constant direction in their wanderings. Others 
but circle aimlessly in their erratic goings and 
comings. They go but to return and stand again 
in the old tracks, and rest they have none. Alex- 
ander weeping for worlds to conquer, who has 
not found himself — much less conquered, is a type 
of the ambitious. Who of us has made an excur- 
sion into the interior world of his neighbor that 
he might see what trees flourished in that latitude, 
what needs there might be, whether the ground 
were rich or no? 

Because Society wears a mask we can but 
dimly perceive the truth over the tea cups or the 
wine glasses. The walls of the drawing-room 
are so hung with draperies and the floors so en- 
cumbered with rugs and everywhere issuch su- 
perfluity of bric-a-brac, that the Cremona is no 
longer resonant therein, and its great voice — its 
wondrous sweet voice — is smothered. While the 
Soul has whispered men to come forth these 
many years, they have thought perhaps it was 
the Cremona itself which spoke. So in the 
Church among those who sit in spiritual lethargy, 
made static by a creed, some upon a time have 
heard that in the organ's peal which somehow 
refuted the preacher, a glorious thunder which 



24 As Nature Whispers. 

drowned his warning croak and drove them out 
into the fields — to find God at last. And thence- 
forth the sunshine was creed enough to them, 
and the dark circles went from under their eyes. 
Was it the organ think you? O incomparable 
ministry of Beauty! 

We shall go into Nature, then, that we may 
arrive at the ground of inspiration, and that we 
may be free of personality. For let a man but 
speak in the house with authority of Beauty, of 
Truth, and straightway men fall to worshipping 
the man. Here we see him to be but the instru- 
ment. We know that these instruments of the 
Supreme Beauty — these prophet-souls — lingered 
alone under the stars; that Truth rose from the 
desert to meet them — flowed to them in the tides 
and winds; that they derived insight from 
growing lilies and chirping crickets, and that 
mountains and lakes made them sensible of the 
presence of God. And these influences they lov- 
ingly transmuted into thought. Nature was the 
thousand rills which meeting in them rose in one 
crystal spring to bless the desert. They who 
upon a time have sought refuge and peace by such 
a spring, who have been refreshed and unspeak- 
ably blessed, in token repair to Nature that hap- 
pily they themselves may attract drop by drop 
the dews of Heaven, till a channel be formed and 
a new spring arise. 

In libraries men gluttonize on the thoughts of 



As Nature Whispers. 25 

others till they can no longer assimilate, and a 
literary indigestion, a mental dyspepsia ensues. 
But the secret of Letters and Art, as it is of life 
itself, is to give, to draw from within and to give 
forth. The only success is to have given abun- 
dantly, wisely, joyfully. Genius gives always a 
thousand-fold more than it receives from the 
world. It gives in heaven's own coin. Doubtless 
it exists to that end. The joy of the doing, the 
love of the work, is the true recompense. The 
limit is soon reached in our absorption from oth- 
ers. From God only may we receive endlessly 
and to our good ; we are required only to render 
in turn to the children of God. From libraries 
we may draw but sparingly and that of the best, 
or we are soon gorged and unfit for thought. 
From Nature we may draw without stint; there 
is no limit but our capacity, if that may be called 
a limit which must of necessity be ever expand- 
ing. God ever urges Man to seek himself through 
Nature. 

When men can meet on these higher grounds 
there is not the same need to have recourse to 
Nature, for there are they in the presence of finer 
fields than any without — where blows the clover 
from which nectar itself is distilled. But so long 
as we are infected with egotism or with fear, we 
rarely so meet ; the elemental beauty and verity in 
us is obscured and we must look to Nature for 
that which is properly our own, that we may 



26 As Nature Whispers. 

in time be led to uncover and reveal it in our- 
selves. 

You who have perchance but a poor relation 
to society have even a princely relation to Na- 
ture. Grieve not, then, for that which is relative ; 
but expand in the rays of the Sun, and presently 
you shall yourself be the dispenser of bounties, the 
giver of good gifts. For you the rain falls, the 
sun shines, the clover blossoms — for you as much 
as for any; aye, more if your heart be great. 
Great Nature is your portion; the heart of man- 
kind is your portion, if so be you will minister to 
its need; God is your portion. It is only as we 
see this at last that we become truly resonant, 
and our lives rhythmic and harmonious. How 
shall this be so long as we lament, so long as we 
sit disconsolate? You must know that all essen- 
tial experience is but preparing you to create 
your own harmonies. It is for you to select your 
influences, that you may the more speedily bring 
this to pass. 

Before you Nature spreads her scroll of beauty 
— unrolls it from your inmost being did you but 
know. Ownership have you in the stars, in the 
winds, in the sun ; proprietor of the sea, the 
mountains and the forest. The perception of the 
Beautiful, of the Good, the measure of your love 
— these are yours to increase, and these in turn 
are the true and permanent titles to the universe. 
Will you weep then for lack of a scrap of paper 



As Nature Whispers. 27 

called a deed ? The robin sings not for the squire 
alone, nor blooms the rhodora in his woodlot 
only. The woodsman is loved of the Sun as no 
king is, and the mountain brook tastes better to 
him. Nature knows not king nor woodsman, but 
Man only. And if cities be partial, Nature is 
ever impartial, and tirelessly sets the good ex- 
ample. To us she ever speaks of equality, but we 
are slow to heed. Of the air there is enough, and 
of sunshine. Though one township be in want, 
the trackless prairies await still the plough and 
the harvester. 'Tis that we need least we com- 
monly hold most dear. We do not quarrel over 
the Sun, but over a little tinsel. Whoever will 
strike a pick in the right place may find gold; 
whoever will sow may reap in turn. So long 
as our dealing is direct with Nature there 
is no favoritism. There is a will-o'-the-wisp 
called Wealth, another named Culture; for 
these Society bids us make all sacrifice, and 
in the feverish pursuit we are disqualified 
for the perception of the real wealth and 
the real culture. But the inspiration which 
supplies the best in these comes from within, is 
evoked from us more than all by Nature. The 
real culture is after all an unfolding, a ripening, 
a drawing closer to the spiritual facts whereby we 
attain to sanity and freedom ; more than all it is 
Love blossoming in the heart. The real wealth is 
capacity. His culture is broadest who sees every- 



28 As Nature Whispers. 

where the good; his deepest who percieves the 
Spirit sustaining all, and hears the rhythmic beat 
of the Universal pulsing in every life — if ever 
so feebly. 

And will you not believe in yourself? Will you 
not see that yours is the estate to cultivate, that 
as we may breathe in as much of the air as we can 
take into the lungs — so also Love as we open our 
hearts, Wisdom in the ratio that we uncover the 
Soul. There is neither let nor hindrance. 



THE WILD. 

All the world live so close in the house there's 
no room for thoughts to maneuver, and so they 
collide. The atmosphere of the house on rainy 
days grows sulphurous with this friction; close 
and sultry as the atmosphere that precedes a 
thunder storm. But in the open air, in the fields 
and in the woods, we discharge our surplus elec- 
tricity and clear our mental atmosphere. There 
is an abuse as well as a use of houses. They are 
intended for shelter, but may easily cut us off 
from the stars and exclude the sun and air as 
well. To be sure there is an indoor sunshine 
which we ourselves may radiate, and which is 
more cheering than the beams of Sol himself. 
There are, however, a great many cloudy days in 
the calendar in this regard. The indoor fog is 
very penetrating ; one needs be stoutly wrapped in 
cheerfulness to withstand it. Outdoor storms are 
invigorating; not so these house storms. They 
tend to rheumatism and to premature wrinkles. 
It is a common superstition that the former is de- 
rived from exposure to the elements. Exposure 
to indoor storms more likely. It becomes chronic 
from living in such atmosphere without the pro- 
tection of cheerfulness and philosophy. The af- 
flicted must put on these garments if they would 



3° As Nature Whispers. 

recover; must go out under the heavens and dis- 
charge their pent up electricity as well. 

It is very wholesome, walking in the rain and 
sleeping in the open air and swimming in the lake. 
But most complaints are house-bred. The house 
becomes surcharged with mental miasma. The 
bacilli of irritability and fussiness and their kin- 
dred brood thrive in the close air. We must let 
the winds blow through our house. But cheerful- 
ness and kindness are the real disinfectants for 
such germs as these. Care swoops down on the 
house, and to the house-ridden appears to darken 
the sky. But on the mountains it is seen to be 
but a small species of bat. The little brown bats 
have been known to hybernate in the attics of old 
dwelling houses in thousands and thousands. 
There is danger of their getting into our heads, 
too. The inmates of old-time mansions who live 
also in superannuated ideas, are terribly afflicted 
in this way ; their mental attics become festooned 
with bats. Bats are partial to the antiquated, the 
dust-covered and superannuated. It is a wonder 
they do not get into libraries, which are com- 
monly rich in this. It is a good sign if, when the 
squire dies, the heirs make bonfires of the dust- 
covered and moth-eaten attic-clothes. But if, in- 
stead, they make pilgrimages thereto to weep and 
do homage to the Genius of the Superannuated, 
surely there is little hope for them in that house. 

There is every year an epidemic of house-clean- 



As Nature Whispers. 31 

ing. It is born of a wise desire; it is Nature act- 
ing upon us to shuffle off the shrivelled leaf and 
husk. But she has not counted on our prudence, 
for we would content ourselves with dusting the 
old leaf and again hanging it on the tree. Our 
habit compels us to act always as though there 
were to be no new leaves. The rite is symbolic — 
symbolic of mind-cleansing and renewal. A few 
housekeepers there are who give attention to this. 
They find the mental cobwebs accumulate very 
fast. They it is who keep their windows open, so 
that on some memorable spring mornings when 
the oriole's note was heard for the first time, there 
appeared to float in from the orchard, ever so 
faintly, a still finer strain, and they, sweet women, 
have rejoiced, have been soothed and uplifted as 
by a wondrous presence. 

But cobwebs are not all ; there is refurnishing 
to attend to. Is there not a class of ideas akin 
to hair-cloth, and dusky walnut, and duskier wall 
paper? And these are to be replaced 1>y others 
akin to bright woods, — oak and birch and curly 
maple. But many cling to the hair-cloth ideas, 
the wax flowers and the coffin plate. Such will 
keep their blinds closed the year around for fear 
of the sunlight, and their ears stopped for fear 
of the Truth. To them there are no mem- 
orable spring mornings, no orioles, and never 
so much as a note of any finer strain 
has reached the dreary depths of that abode. 



32 As Nature Whispers. 

In that house the children are pale and 
have lack-luster eyes ; there is no joyousness there 
and the poor things are sad and long to fly away. 
They have heard some whisperings of freedom, 
perhaps in their dreams, or in the Far-off-Time 
before they came to live in that house of gloom. 
But as it is the unhappy children are aging fast, 
and the memory of the Far-off-Time has vanished 
away ; for through the closed windows comes not 
even the note of the oriole. 

It is in the house that thoughts grow musty 
and stale. At least we shall not deserve the re- 
proach of Paleface and Tenderfoot, but take to 
the woods rather and profit by the wholesome re- 
action of the Elemental upon our plastic minds. 
So may we incorporate the granite ledge into our 
backbones and let the sap of the oak run in our 
veins ; take to ourselves the cosmopolitan instincts 
of the wild duck, that we may be at home through- 
out the length and breadth of continents wherever 
night overtake us and not merely in some six by 
nine box of a house and in some equally small 
round of duties. So shall we have the world at 
our feet and not on our shoulders. We shall no 
longer imagine ourselves to be Atlas, but aim 
rather to be Hermes, the messenger of the gods ; 
and it may be given us to fly between Heaven 
and Earth in some kindly ministry ; and even to 
breathe over the roofs of the world some rhythmic 
measure that here and there where a window is 



As Nature Whispers. 33 

open it may float into the room with the light of 
the stars, and the sleepers shall smile in their 
sleep — the beautiful smile that brings back the 
roses of youth and smooths away the wrinkles of 
care. Prometheus did not take all the celestial 
fire ; we may yet snatch a brand, this time to set 
fire to the rubbish heaps of the world. Doubtless 
it would no longer displease the gods. If so, it 
were well to cast a brand into Walhalla itself and 
so help to bring on the new order of things. 

The hawk and the owl pick up always the 
sickly birds. It is expedient for us as well to be 
among the robust and strong-pinioned, lest we 
fall a prey to the hawks and owls of negation. 
Strengthen your wings then that you may take 
bolder and bolder flights ; sharpen your eyes that 
you may espy the falcon from afar. But let us 
not forget that the bolder the flight, the better 
the judgment that must go with it. It is not the 
rich that are safe, nor the much read, but the wise 
only, who have learned the use of their spiritual 
eyes, and no hawk ever catches them. 

It is a wise duck, too, that sees the decoy there 
in the sheltered cove and keeps on his way. It 
were well to fly high and not look for too comfort- 
able a spot. There's safety in the open. 

What is this hold the Wild has upon us? It 
is the voice of freedom, nothing less — the stirrings 
of freedom within us. We receive there the sug- 
gestion of our true estate; which we project in 



34 As Nature Whispers. 

the solitudes — which we commonly obscure in 
society. It is not in the forest nor yet on the 
mountains — it is within ourselves. But there 
with Nature we are suddenly made aware of it. 
The wild apple makes a good stock on which to 
graft, so hardy is it; but if left to itself it pro- 
duces only knurly fruit, unfit for use. It is very 
much so with country-bred boys ; they are sturdy 
stock on which to graft the finer graces, to sus- 
tain and nourish a fair blossom and plentiful 
fruit, and to withstand the ravages of canker 
worm and coddling moth. But it largely depends 
on the thought grafted. Left to themselves they, 
too, come up a scraggly growth and produce at 
best some crabbed weazened thought. Every 
man should serve a term in the city ; let him live 
with it, work with it, throb with it — but let him 
not forget the smell of balsam and the whir of 
grouse. Then let him revert to the Wild and con- 
sort daily, if may be, with the highhole and the 
Northern hare. Let him spend his -ripe days in the 
country, the inspiration of the fields always at 
hand; and if he have in him the slightest strain 
of the poet, he will speak with assurance some 
word or two. Man and Nature; Nature and 
Man — one must know both to speak surely of 
either. We speak of one in terms of the other ; 
refer them to a common source ; see in them at 
last one identity. 

Wild and free ! Wild and free ! There's music 



As Nature Whispers. 35 

in the very words. It is after all the wild beauty, 
the wild health and vigor we love most. Some 
few there are ever who refuse to be over-civilized ; 
to whom the cry of the loon and the tap of the 
woodpecker is sweet music. Something aborig- 
inal they cherish in their make-up. It is precious, 
this elemental streak — far more so than any ac- 
complishments. This the city and the club cannot 
take from them at all hazards; rather than that 
they would turn savage altogether. Because of 
this they do not capitulate to the current non- 
sense; because of this they are pioneers. They 
are the pioneers in thought, the pioneers in art; 
they are ever the romaticists. They cannot bear 
to be choked and stifled with the Classic, 
gagged with the Past ; no school can contain them 
long; no method bind them. Towards men they 
lack reverence. They doff their hats to the sub- 
lime only. They prefer the silence to the bab- 
bling of schools. 

In the presence of the Wild may it be to feel a 
kinship always, — tacit homage to the free and 
untrammelled in us. The sudden leaping away of 
the startled rabbit, or a weasel furtively crossing 
the path ; the splendid whir of the ruffled grouse ; 
the low, silent flight through the woods at twi- 
light of a barred owl, or the splash of muskrats 
into their pond as we pass in the dusk ; the sight 
of porpoises leaping from the blue waters, or the 
osprey's headlong dive, or a solitary marsh-hawk 



36 As Nature Whispers. 

skimming silently over the marsh-lands — they 
give us every one a thrill, strike in us an answer- 
ing chord. 

We are attracted most by the heroic in Nature ; 
perhaps because civilization affords but little of 
this heroic spirit, while its fires slumber yet deep 
within us. In the mountains we drop artificially 
as we ascend. Give us time enough and we be- 
come natural ; and the slumbering fires waken, 
warm the heart and creep thence into the blood 
and finally tingle in the fingers. We start mani- 
kins and arrive gods. We have run up the scale 
of consciousness — straightened to our full 
stature. As Beauty redeems us, so is it equally 
true that the Wild restores. When there is no 
longer any influx of the Wild into our conscious- 
ness; no impetuous onslaught of Goths and 
Huns to overturn our effete civilization and lend 
their rude strength and brawn upon which to 
graft anew, it must be we shall wither away. 

We need to make constant excursions into the 
woods and fields there to find renewal. They 
who have lost this secret think to find renewed 
life in drugs and tonics ; as though there could be 
any renewal without a change of thought. The 
winds will blow away our timidity and faithless- 
ness if only we give them a chance, and in time 
bring us some virile thought — perhaps life us off 
our feet for once. The sun will give our thoughts 
a mellow tinge; birds will stir in us the ancient 



As Nature Whispers. 37 

chords of melody. The boom of the surf is our 
own voice drowning for the time the little falsetto 
we have assumed to be ours. 

With the advance of reason, imagination is neg- 
lected, and in turn reason must suffer for lack of 
it. Consider a completely unimaginative pedant 
in the woods, armed with data and bristling with 
facts. His observations would be those of a cli- 
nometer or barometer; he would see like a sur- 
veyor's transit. What intolerable bores do we be- 
come for lack of imagination and humor. Let us 
leave our pedantry in the schools and museums 
when we go to the woods, resolved to be for the 
time as aboriginal as any. So may we see again 
in the lake the Smile of the Great Spirit; speak 
once more with birch and tamarack; hear again 
the Westwind and the Southwind. It is in the 
town and the church that superstition lives. The 
pure myth of the woods is perennial and jubilant ; 
deep-rooted not in fear, but in some elemental 
substratum of our being; subconscious memories 
of some original sympathy with Nature before 
our apparent separation took place. It is a far-off 
echo of aboriginal chants before ever Greece was 
— pre-Atlantian perhaps ; faint echo of some pri- 
meval dawn when the Earth-soul spoke to men — 
when men were yet perhaps part faun. 

It is in solitude we shall draw nearest to Na- 
ture — and best understand ourselves. Some 
measure of solitude we must have ; it is as neces- 



38 As Nature Whispers. 

sary as sleep. Those who do without it have a 
fagged look; their composure gradually slips 
from them and they lack poise and serenity. Sol- 
itude is in no sense isolation, but rather this clos- 
er communion with Nature ; least of all is it lone- 
liness. The nearest approach to isolation is in 
uncongenial society. Nay, isolation itself is per- 
haps a cold heart, a lack of sympathy. It matters 
not how many people we brush against, — if we 
feel no sense of brotherhood, that is isolation. In 
solitude myriad voices whisper; here does Nature 
offer her closest sympathy. But only to men of a 
certain higher development does solitude become 
a resource and a solace. To a self-centered man 
it is intolerable. To shallow persons it means 
being left to their own society, which they abhor. 
But to the prophetic soul it means communion 
with God. Such are never alone. For them 
God peoples the desert and the expanse of the 
Ocean ; the forest depth and the mountain summit 
are redeemed and made hospitable by the divine 
Presence. We cannot separate Nature from Re- 
ligion. Part and parcel are we of what we call 
Nature ; one with the Great Spirit which animates 
Nature. Our life appears hopelessly involved in 
the enigma, whereas it is in reality the key of 
the same. Only because of the divine in us are 
we able to apprehend the divine; it is in itself 
proof of our divinity that we are able so to do. 
It is in solitude that we more clearly perceive this 



As Nature Whispers. 39 

world-unity ; and hence the value of solitude to 
those whose inner eyes are opened. The percep- 
tion of our identity with the Spirit and that this 
External depends on us and not we on it; that 
despite the manifold appearances the Soul abides, 
ageless, deathless, immutable — therein for us is 
emancipation. In nameless ways and under end- 
less pretexts, it is freedom at last which men seek. 
But this, the best gift of the gods, is bestowed 
only upon their most promising children. Clear- 
eyed and of resolute thought must they be indeed 
who attain to this. 

In solitude Nature holds the glass up to us very 
close, and if our eyes be muddy we cannot bear to 
look into it. But the clear-eyed gaze impas- 
sively. If we walk not with God, but take the 
world into the woods — that is not solitude, for we 
are crowded and elbowed by the multitude of 
our thoughts, rude and undisciplined as any 
crowd. Only when we are divested for the time 
of the world-thought do we really derive the 
benefit of solitude. For this is its truest benefit, 
that the din and hubbub should cease and the 
Silence be heard. Tis then, and for this, that 
solitude is sweet — sweet beyond compare. There 
are we solaced by the ineffable Presence. But 
we want no solitary sell in Certosa, nor the clois- 
tered seclusion of a San Marco ; that were but to 
crib and confine the more. It is Liberty we want 
under the heavens, and this descends upon us only 



40 As Nature Whispers. 

with the Spirit. And if our solitary vigil has not 
given us this ; has not disengaged us from the 
world thought and set us free in the Spirit; has 
not warmed and mellowed and humanized us as 
well — then have we attained only to isolation and 
not to solitude. 



M A G I C-P L A Y. 

Child of Nature, let us sit under the pines in 
the winter sunshine on the fragrant yielding 
needles of the white pine. The wintergreens 
and club-mosses have pushed their way through 
the floor of pine-needles. The winter sunshine 
pours upon us its golden bath till these are warm 
to the touch and the air is full of the luscious, 
pitchy fragrance. Fit resting-place for poets and 
heroes this ; inspirer of rugged thoughts. There 
haunts the piney woods on mountain slopes the 
spirit of heroic thought. Let the right man make 
this his couch and it will tingle in his blood. It 
would seem as though the resinous odor were a 
disinfectant for the mind's ills, and somehow 
served to clear the mental atmosphere. 

There shall come to us here new strength and 
fortitude. Our minds and hearts shall grow ro- 
bust. We cannot recall to mind what it was that 
vexed us in the city ; it has faded in the distance 
with the hum of the streets. Tis here a majestic 
solitude which we people with a Spartan brood 
of thoughts — children of the winds and streams. 
Our thoughts grow fragrant like pine-needles, 
and are musical as the soughing of the pine or 
the murmuring of the brook. How is it some can 
lose so much of their time smothered in houses 



42 As Nature Whispers. 

and buried in cities, till all their thoughts are 
house-bred and feeble, and they are ready for 
the latest contagion? But then we are all spend- 
thrifts of our time and have little idea of the 
value of thoughts. As though other than 
thought — the ministry of kindly and beautiful 
thoughts — there were any real business in life. 
And this is one good office of the woods — to in- 
spire fragrant thoughts, to be carried to the city 
like arbutus to cheer the bed-ridden and house- 
stricken, or like club-mosses and holly to help 
draw the cheer and love and kindliness out of 
our hearts and make a season of joyousness. 

Below in the swamp the trunks of maples and 
birches glisten silvery gray and the forest of in- 
terlacing branches has a purplish sheen. Some- 
time these branches will be hung with myriad 
glistening drops ; again they will be encased in 
ice — a crystal splendor, or festooned with thick- 
hanging snow. A flock of goldfinches in winter 
dress comes bounding through the air with their 
peculiar buoyant flight and light among the dry 
catkins of the birch and alders ; their sugary 
sweet calls sounding like springtime love-notes. 
The goldfinches speak softly — they appear always 
to be in love. A little later a faint red haze will 
hang over the swamp, for the red maples will be 
in flower. In October it will be a bewildering 
mass of color; and indescribable glory will rest 
on the swamps. First a tupelo will blaze forth 



As Nature Whispers. 43 

in August, and then a solitary red maple. For 
days and days they will stand alone — forerunners 
of the coming wave of beauty. 

There dwells in the swamp a famous Magician. 
It is rumored he was present at the birth of the 
lotus in the Nile ; that in the Long Ago he cast 
a spell over Syrian fields and the hills of Moab, 
over Thracian vales and Persian gardens. How- 
beit his genius has all of its old fire; he has lost 
none of his force of originality, but brings here 
more love to his work than ever. True no one 
has seen the Magician himself in the swamp, nor 
espied him wandering in the fields hereabouts; 
but all sooner or later comes to see and love his 
work. Enchantment hovers in the skirts of his 
gown. With a tap of his wand all is changed. 
It seems he is a high priest of the Sun. Light is 
his Ariel. He has no personal motive; so he is 
always content, and is never weary. His wage 
is Beauty. 

It seems that he has whispered to the spider 
concerning her web, that it is not to catch flies 
only, but to catch sunbeams as well. To the cat- 
bird he has given some advice in nest-building, 
and the coloring of eggs ; indeed, he has whis- 
pered to all the birds hereabouts. None have 
paid better heed than the vireos, though they do 
not build in the swamp, preferring the dry hill- 
side; they are all artists. The redeye and war- 
bling vireos are full to overflowing with this 



44 As Nature Whispers. 

sense of beauty. It has touched their voices. The 
redeye always chants ; life would seem to be wor- 
ship with him, as it is with the hermit and wood- 
thrush. Not so the white-eye and yellowthroat ; 
their voices are just a little cracked, but they are 
not wanting in fervor. All members of the 
orchestra have not important parts, but all con- 
tribute to the general harmony. Trombones, 
bassoons, and kettle-drums, and on occasion tri- 
angles and cymbals, are all very essential to the 
whole, but hardly solo instruments. The cat- 
bird is the foremost vocalist in the swamp ; not so 
dramatic as the thrasher, but a little more real, 
and more modest withal, in his delivery. The 
Carolina wren is a brave little singer with a sweet 
voice — a ringing voice. But neither can inspire 
that repose and reverie which inevitably follows 
from listening to the thrush and the redeye, or 
the robin when late in the afternoon he flies over 
from the pasture and pours out his soul in his ves- 
per song from the tallest maple in the swamp — 
in honor of the Magician perhaps. The true bird 
of Paradise is he — our beloved robin. Perhaps 
it is of Paradise he sings, he himself a sweet 
singer on fair mission bent; beloved minister of 
Beauty with all his lyric force to appeal to the 
hearts of men. O great Magician ! O wondrous 
bird! who can work such beauty in this poor 
swamp, that we leave all to follow here and listen 
in the enchanted time ; that even now in winter 



As Nature Whispers. 45 

we come here for very memory of those halcyon 
days ; that we come here to worship, deeming 
this the fittest place where such great beauty is. 
Here do our hearts grow too large for our bodies, 
so great, so tender a love wells up. 'Twas thus 
our prayer went forth with the lyric prayer of the 
robin, here in the swamp. But now he has gone, 
our tuneful bird, though the swamp is filled 
with memories of him, so magnetic was his 
presence. 

The Magician has not neglected the frogs. He 
designed the dress of the leopard-frog and the 
very green livery of the spring frog. Cricket- 
frogs and treetoads he uses in his orchestra, 
much as he does field crickets, for that sustained 
rhythm which seems the pulse of the earth itself. 
The chorus of peeping frogs is his particular de- 
light ; sweet it is as a chorus of child voices. His 
idea it was — the sculptured shell of the wood- 
tortoise, and the bright colors of the painted tur- 
tle. He has made marvellous designs for trout 
and bream and pickerel ; suggested the gauzy 
wings of the dragonflies; and let his fancy run 
riot in butterflies and moths and the endless 
shapes and colors and markings of beetles. He 
designed also a very handsome tricolored coat for 
the skunk, and a plain but very rich one for the 
mink and otter. The gray squirrel has a royal 
coat of silvery sheen — now at its best. The weasel 
is allowed to change his coat and wear a white 



46 As Nature Whispers. 

one in winter, but why this exception in his favor 
no one knows. 

He is an expert in lichen painting, is our Ma- 
gician. He works chiefly on the white pine in 
Parmelia and Cetraria designs. These are classic 
with him ; quite as much so as was the lotus with 
the Egyptian or the Acanthus with the Greek. 
Why not take the hint, since this is the land of 
the pine and the lichen ; not Ionic and Doric, but 
Birch and Pine? The larger Polyperus makes a 
good capitol on a white birch column. Some 
beautiful work also he does on granite boulders. 
''You are dressed somewhat soberly for this fes- 
tival," he says. ''Let us see if we cannot touch 
you up a little." On tree trunks he uses the ex- 
quisite design of the fern-moss. The hairy cap 
and Dicranum are commonly used on the ledge. 

What wonderland mosaics in the neglected 
wood paths, not to be equalled by jade and ser- 
pentine and lapis lazuli; the silver grays and 
mauves, and gray-green tints with variations end- 
less, requiring a vocabulary of color terms. 
There's no such blending ever ini Florentine 
mosaic; it is but patchwork to this. The Magi- 
cian loves well the running blackberry esteemed a 
common plant, but none the less a more rare and 
beautiful design than is to be found in Venetian 
lace, or the rich embroideries of China and Japan. 
But his work is not to be compared with anything 
so gaudy as the latter, though he knows how to 



As Nature Whispers. 47 

dazzle the eye in October with sugar-maple and 
scarlet oak and the Virginia creeper's matchless 
glowing color. The subdued tones of the damask 
robes of Shinto priests ; the colors of old Persian 
rugs, of Moorish tiles and Mediaeval stained 
glass — these suggest the hues of the creeping 
blackberry as in gray November days it weaves 
its harmonies in among brown oak and beach 
leaves lying on the mosaic of hairycaps and rein- 
deer lichens and ruddy-hued wintergreens, set 
perhaps with pinkish pebbles of felsite and satiny 
bits of feldspar, smooth pebbles of milky quartz 
and shining specks of mica. 

He has had much to say concerning the bark 
of trees. The best work is done perhaps on the 
canoe birch, though the cherry birch has its own 
charm; and so the yellow birch with its metallic 
tints, and the wood colors of maple and beech 
and black cherry. And where is there a more 
unique design than the shagbark? Walnut — the 
nut of Jupiter; oak, sacred to Druid rites; ash, 
sacred tree which held heaven and earth together 
— irreverent have we grown that we put you into 
firewood and barrel staves. So is Mythology al- 
ways fading into Utility. But mythology has its 
uses as well as lumber and nails — which only 
serve us in the end for a coffin. Alas, if the oak 
no longer inspires us to worship, nor the ash hold 
heaven somewhere in its branches, nor we at 
anv time sacrifice our foibles and whims at the 



48 As Nature Whispers. 

arbor vitse — ancient tree of sacrifice — and receive 
there in return some new impetus to resolute 
thought. 

Where else is there such splendid rough and 
ready work as on the bark of the great yellow 
and sugar-pines and the sequoia of the Sierra 
Nevada? For this same Magician or a kindred 
spirit is at work there. There, too, in the purpling 
twilight, when the wild doves are calling and the 
smoke of the camp-fire ascends in the clear dry 
air are we brought under his spell. 

Every spring the Magician effects some mar- 
velous transformation among the birds. He 
waves his wand and dull colors become bright in 
a twinkling; the reedbird turns into a bobolink 
and the cardinal puts on his flaming coat. Per- 
haps if we knew and loved him better he would 
consent to wave his wand over our bald pates. 
What if we could renew our teeth as the lobster 
his claws? The lobster in his subterranean 
cavern on his bed of Irish moss and red algae has 
a secret we have not learned. But it is not to be 
had by boiling him. 

He excels in leaf magic. At some mysterious 
signal which no one has been able to discover — 
it may be the drumming of the ruffed grouse — 
these little round knobs and these sharp-pointed 
ones will suddenly expand and hang out their 
green flags. Wonderful to relate, there are never 
any slips — never a mistake. No one has ever seen 



As Nature Whispers. 49 

oak leaves on the beech, nor a maple leaf on the 
oak. It has been intimated that perhaps the Ma- 
gician is after all a great hypnotist ; there are no 
objective oaks nor beeches nor maples — no leaves, 
but all these are in the mind of the Magician and 
we are made to see the same thing. Howbeit it 
answers the same end. Most philosophers, in fact 
all worthy the name, concur in this, that the Ma- 
gician has no whims but has certain ends in view, 
and never swerves from his purpose, which is a 
most benign one. Very certain we are that it is 
not black magic. Let us not be afraid of the name 
of Magic. Is not love magic, and thought 
magic ? Are we not beset by miracles and magic- 
play? It would follow from this that what we 
call birth and death are a sort of hypnosis too. 
After all it matters not so much whether it be 
hypnosis or no, — but what purpose does it serve ? 
And the best experience answers that it is educa- 
tional and beneficent. Bravely then we lend our- 
selves to it on the strength of our faith in the 
Purpose. We ask only that henceforth we be de- 
livered from our delusions with reference to our- 
selves and others. Let the Magician work out 
his full purpose in us. For is it not the ministry 
of Beauty which redeems us? Are we not led 
step by step from the external, the superficial, to 
the moral, the spiritual, the Inmost Beauty which 
is Love ? 

To return then to our leaf-magic; it is obvious 



50 As Nature Whispers. 

that it serves the ends of Beauty. Even these 
shrivelled white oak leaves here on the edge of 
the swamp still bear faint witness. Always in 
Nature the new life pushes the old. Before the 
old leaves are off the new buds are forming; in- 
deed, with hickory and beech and hobblebush are 
already well formed. If when the leaves have 
fallen, there is no sign of further life, we may 
conclude the tree is really dead. It is no longer a 
tree — it is wood merely. 

The new life should make its appearance before 
the old is done. There should be budding prom- 
ise of the spring while the snows are falling fast ; 
intimations, that is, of the Higher Life already 
showing themselves here, — even as it is with the 
hobblebush, whose new buds are fully formed 
while the great leaves are taking on their coppery 
hues. 

Some of the rarest coloring is reserved for the 
mushrooms and appears in the Dog days that 
there may be a particular beauty for every season. 
Witness the hue and tint and contour of Agaric, 
of Boletus, and Russula. More exquisite thing 
of soft velvety green than the green Russula is 
not to be found ; nor can rose surpass the rich hue 
of the red Russula. And what a beauty has the 
deadly Amanita — gleaming, fragile, fair as ala- 
baster. The Fly Amanita is the painted courtesan 
of the woods. But the Magician has whispered 
in the ears of his creatures that they shall not 



As Nature Whispers. 51 

be beguiled by the siren. The nose of the squirrel 
tells him no; and he nibbles an edible Russula 
but passes the beautiful Amanita resolute as Ulys- 
ses. Children of the wonderful Nose, the inspired 
Nose indeed; inscrutable knowledge of the ol- 
factories; marvelous nose-whisperings. "Russu- 
la — eat!" says the Nose, and they eat. "Ama- 
nita — eat not!" says the Nose, and they obey. 
Inscrutable Nose, servant of rabbit and fox, of 
the bear and the moose ; which says to the rabbit 
— "Yonder a mile or so a red fox skirts the 
swamp. Get you to your brush pile ;" and to the 
i r ox — "In the swamp in such a place lurks a cot- 
tontail." 

The magical Nose of Necessity this, replaced 
in man by the no less magical Nose of Beauty; 
which says to him — "Arbutus! White Violet! 
Sweet brier ! Bayberry ! Pitchpine ! Balsam ! in- 
terpret thou their significance; appropriate thou 
their beauty." 

There is moreover the inscrutable Eye, servant 
of hawk and owl ; which says to the soaring fal- 
con — "Yonder microscopic object some thousand 
feet below is field mouse or shrew or partridge 
chick" — and he descends like an arrow ; and to the 
fierce owl gazing into the all but impenetrable 
blackness — 'There sit young partridges on that 
limb." Here the magical Eye of Necessity, trans- 
formed in man into the still more magical Eye of 
Beauty; which as the one showed to the hawk, 



52 As Nature Whispers. 

mouse and shrew and partridge, and to these in 
turn revealed the hawk — an ominous speck in 
the distant blue; so this reveals to man the play 
of light in the mist, and the rainbow ; shows him 
the rich mottled feathers, the poise and grace of 
this same hawk; the dainty coat of the deer- 
mouse and the silvery fur of the mole — designed 
not solely by Utility ; spreads before him the smil- 
ing panorama of green meadow and forest, and 
snowy peak, and nestling lake — blue as robin's 

egg- 

And is there not also the magical Ear of Ne- 
cessity, servant of mink and weasel and house 
cat, which records faint squeals of innumerable 
vibrations per second ; and again a magical Ear of 
Beauty which hears celestial harmonies and bids 
the fingers cover page upon page with strange 
hieroglyphics, which, being interpreted by those 
whom the Ear serves, by cunningly devised and 
resonant bits of wood and brass, give us heaven- 
born melodies, dynamic, harmonies? 

Lastly there is the magical Voice of Necessity, 
obedient to trumpeter swan and wild goose, 
breaking the stillness of the far regions of the air 
with its clarion call ; and the incomparable and 
magical Voice of Beauty, of which the vocal 
chords, — nay, more, the emotions, the very con- 
sciousness, is but an instrument upon which the 
Spirit breathes, as the winds play upon the pine 
boughs. The magical Voice proceeds from the 



As Nature Whispers. 53 

heart and goes to the heart of humanity, and 
by means of its vibrations works wondrous 
changes, and is itself a means of some 
Revelation. From the throats of thrush and 
robin, oriole and finch, it makes further reve- 
lation — works some reformation. O magical 
Voice of the Universe ! Still does the East sing 
unto the West and the West replies with its in- 
spiriting chant. Still do the morning stars sing- 
together; now as ever the music of the Spheres. 
But only the magical Ear of Beauty hears. The 
Ear of Necessity is taken up with the hiss of 
steam, the hum of machinery and the tap of ham- 
mers, — in which the Ear of Beauty detects harmo- 
nies as well. None the less the morning stars still 
sing together ; and the Wizard ever practise* his 
beautiful magic. 



VOICES. 

Let us draw round the hearth in the twilight 
hour. The Wizard has cast his spell over the 
firelight as well. Hark to the voice of the drift- 
wood fire ; wreckage of vessels built in the olden 
time when copper bolts were used. So the wood 
is impregnated with copper salts; impregnated 
too with the thought of that tragic hour, when 
the schooner homeward bound from Georges, 
with her load of cod and haddock and hake, 
drove on the ledge in the winter gale and all 
hands were lost. The spray still hisses a little in 
these flames of azure and malachite hue, and the 
wood moans some of its past. But the orange 
flame of the sea salt burns brightly and cheerily. 
It knows no lament. I think the Sea has been 
let into the secret that Man can drink up the 
oceans and swallow the Sun, and roll the Earth 
between his fingers and thumb; and it is only 
little clay images of him that are battered on 
the ledge and strewn on the sands along with 
stranded sand-sharks and jellyfish, and uprooted 
kelp, and the broken mast and spars and tangled 
rigging of a Gloucester schooner. 

Again hark to the voice of the coal fire — the 
brightly glowing coals, the voice of the Long 



56 As Nature Whispers. 

Ago. Gone these many ages are those ancient 
jungles of the Coal Age where flourished Sigil- 
laria and Lepidodendrons, and the Coal ferns; 
gone this long time the strange amphibians 
which peopled those interminable jungles and 
breathed that carbon-saturated air. Of what 
Stygian scenes, of what a monstrous life could 
these flames tell : the combats of slimy monsters 
in the heart of that watery jungle; the birth, the 
old age and decay of a whole flora and fauna, 
whose bones are now brought at last to the 
funeral pyre. Earth knows them no more. Still 
other races have come and gone since their day. 
Here on the glowing coals this life of the incon- 
ceivably remote Past perhaps renews itself, here 
the Phoenix arises from its ashes. It is doubtless 
so for the voice is always serene, — is indeed sym- 
bolic of cheer and content. 

In tne open fire we hear the voice of the 
Woods — the blazing oak and hickory logs, the 
lichens still on them, and perhaps tucked snugly 
away in winding passages eaten into the hard 
wood the larvae of hickory-borers and other bee- 
tles. We mourned the fall of those forest trees ; 
the sound of the axe has been pain to every true 
friend of the woods. But the blaze calls forth no 
such thought; it is cheeriness itself as we draw 
round the hearth. Throughout a century these 
oaks and hickories lived in closest relation with 
the wood life of bird and insect and four-footed 



As Nature Whispers. 57 

creatures, and went down at last before a biped 
with axe sharper than ever beaver's tooth. 

Generations of gray squirrels built their out- 
door nests in this oak— there in that fork where 
once a vine crossed ; built them of oak and maple 
leaves for the spring and summer. Their winter 
quarters were in the hollow trunk ; their lookout 
perhaps that knothole in the branch. How often 
in the twilight the screech-owl has come on silent 
wing and perched on that projecting knob, and 
sat gazing with fierce round eyes into the dark- 
ness, and listening with sharp ears. On how 
many golden mornings the sharp-shinned hawk 
has stopped in his swift low flight to rest there 
and peer about with terrible eyes, in search of 
mouse or shrew, till disturbed by the excited 
cawing of a band of crows. 

What hosts of gallflies and sawflies punctured 
the leaves of this oak. What a huge progeny of 
buzzing insects the old tree tenderly reared. 
What legions of aphids have fed upon this tree ; 
what myriads of black ants wandered up and 
down its trunk and branches in search of these 
same aphids. What flocks of warblers in the 
spring, and of creepers, nuthatches, and chica- 
dees, in the winter-time have scanned its twigs 
for anything edible according to bird standards. 
Its acorns were carried to the four points of the 
compass. Gray squirrels buried them yonder in 
the pine woods; and the jay dropped now and 



58 As Nature Whispers. 

then one in the pastures, meaning to carry it to 
some hole in a fence-post. So a hundred oaks 
have sprung from this one parent. 

The old oak looked upon many scenes and 
some tragedies. In the blackberry and wild-rose 
thicket at its foot the song sparrows were wont 
to build; a cottontail had its form hidden in the 
grass; and not far away the ovenbird concealed 
her nest, or perhaps a chewink. On an old stump 
in that thicket the ruffed grouse drummed on 
April mornings. There were blacksnakes and 
weasels and redsquirrels that came that way, 
and not every little downy ovenbird, nor every 
little cottontail lived to scramble for itself. 
There was many an empty nest; many a naked 
birdling frozen in unseasonable frosts, was car- 
ried out in its little mother's bill and dropped 
beyond the thicket. 

The hickory stood at the cross-roads and the 
village boys clubbed it on their way to school; 
so in turn their sons, and again their grandsons. 
Under this tree the farmer drove on his way to 
town. Consider the loads of fragrant hay that 
passed that way and brushed against it, leaving 
wisps of straw dangling high above the road. 
Little processions took their way beneath this 
tree to the village graveyard, while the oriole 
sang overhead all unheeding, and the apple trees 
were in blossom. The tree saw them first toddle 
to school and saw them carried away at last. 



As Nature Whispers. 59 

What gales have roared about it and rattled its 
bare branches: what mighty reverberations re- 
sounded there ! What sagas of the Ancient For- 
est has the Westwind told; what mighty chants 
the Northwind breathed, as the snow has come 
swirling over the pasture and clung to its 
branches. And then the silence of the winter 
days; the majesty of the winter nights when the 
village folk were abed and snoring, and the old 
hickory stood alone in the glittering snows, soli- 
tary witness of the unutterable glory of Orion. 
And at last came the axe sharper than beaver's 
tooth; all this — and the voice bewails not, and 
the flames crackle cheerily and we are warmed 
and cheered as we sit about the hearth. What 
if our thoughts were as great as was the life of 
that tree, — reflected the winter nights, the sum- 
mer dawn, the October days, the ineffable 
silences ! 

The Wizard presides over the twilight and 
somehow has hidden in this hour a mystery 
which men are ever seeking. In the mountains 
we feel its solemn influence. The birds feel it, 
the vesper-sparrow and the wood-thrush; the 
robin changes his song to a reverie. He can no 
more throw it off than can we in listening to him. 
The Sea can not escape it but is always soothed, 
and we who look at it are hushed by its serene 
voice — that Ancient Voice which spoke when the 
everlasting hills were not as yet, before the 



60 As Nature Whispers. 

mother Sea had felt the birth throbs of the Ap- 
palachian and the Sierra; which sang as it ca- 
ressed the treeless primeval shores that had not 
known the footsteps of any creature ; which 
greeted the Sun and Moon, — they alone tor 
countless ages. Voice of the Ancient Solitude 
which sang with the stars through the Archean 
night, and after the lapse of untold aeons still 
sings tranquil and unworn as in that first morn; 
its song has been the requiem of unnumbered 
hosts, but has grown no sadder, is not weary, 
sounds no lament. Man alone knows tragedy — 
alone sees evil ; he alone despairs. Earth has be- 
come one vast sepulcher, and yet 'tis smiling as 
ever. Never was spring more winsome, nor 
autumn mellower. Earth wears no mourning. 
Ocean chants no dirge. The sun always shines; 
always somewhere dew is falling, trees are grow- 
ing, flowers are blooming. The whole trouble 
then lies in a nutshell — the consciousness of man. 
But what does the Voice know of this, or of 
death — of beginning or end? It sings as it has 
always sung — of Life. 

The saga of the Sea, great mother of the 
Mountains, on whose heaving bosom sleep the 
Winds — Bethink you of the Long Ago when 
the Wizard stood on the shore of the Paleozoic 
sea in the dawn of that awesome day, when after 
a gestation lasting ages there was born the giant 
Appalachian — flung forth into the light of day 



As Nature Whispers. 61 

from the womb of Ocean, and the waters rushed 
back in vast tidal waves as the Titanic rock- 
ribbed child of the Sea rose to greet the sky, and 
the Sun kissed its alpine summits for the first 
time. Those terrific birth throes over, the fond 
mother caressed and fondled her mighty infant, 
as cloud-topped and snow-capped the majestic 
Appalachian towered above the placid waters. 
Then followed a period of growth till the moun- 
tain child reached its splendid height, and the 
youth — the very Achilles of mountain chains — 
was bearded with the primeval forest. Anon ma- 
turity, and now old age — a ghost of its former 
self, shrunken and bent, and long separated from 
its beautiful mother, the Sea. What if they 
should meet again; would the Sea recognize her 
heroic child in this aged wrinkled creature? 
Other children has she, — some younger and more 
lusty ; born of Jurassic, or Cretaceous, or Eocene 
and Miocene times. But all are aging and pass- 
ing away, and in time but skeletons of them will 
be left, as of the super-aged Laurentian Hills. 
The ''everlasting hills" then have their little day, 
their youth, their old age. The mountain chain 
is a rope of sand. The Spirit alone is ageless, — 
knows neither birth nor death, neither yesterday 
nor to-morrow. Look within then for the Ever- 
lasting, for there it abides in that indestructible 
inmost center. 

The song of the River, the child of the Mist ; 



62 As Nature Whispers. 

melodious always, from the first tinkling melo- 
dies of crystal drops oozing from the moss and 
falling into tiny pools, there on the mountain 
slopes, to its child-song, its laughing child-song, 
as it tumbles helter-skelter down the ravine. And 
the virile song of its youth, the lusty young tor- 
rent, vigorous and swift, like a runner making 
the hundred-yard dash of the rapids, and racing 
on through the gorge with tumultuous song of 
power. Lastly, the serene song of age, as it 
spreads out broad and ample and majestic 
through valley and lowland, past sunny farms 
and city wharves, till it enters the Sea at last and 
its song becomes the song of the Sea. 

Even at the city wharves it has not wholly for- 
gotten its child-song; remembers still its gleeful 
childhood and its virile youth; recalls with a 
thrill the long sweep of the rapids, the mad dash 
over the fault-cliff, the eddies and the whirlpool. 
It croons to itself in its placid course, of the 
wheels it turned, the rafts it floated; of the swift 
race through the gorge — the stars glittering 
overhead and on either side the somber spruce, 
the deer coming down to the water's edge in the 
dawn, the black bear lumbering through the 
brush to wade into the pool. And now to meet 
the incoming shad and herring in the spring, and 
to hear the incessant croak of frogs on the river 
banks, the jingle of bobolinks and the gurgle-ee 
of redwings ; till at last the taste of salt, the rail 



As Nature Whispers. 63 

skulking in the marsh-grass, the armies of fiddler 
crabs and the mussel beds, the gulls soaring over- 
head, and at night the guttural call of night her- 
rons coming after eels to take back to the heron- 
ry. Thus to enter the Sea, to be merged in it, to 
sing the song of the Sea. 

And yet it will rise again in the beautiful Mist 
to return to the mountains, come tumbling down 
the ravines and sing again the laughing child- 
song. Does it remember the Sea, or has it for- 
gotten ? — as we have forgotten, that ocean out of 
which we have come, that eternity of Life that 
lies behind us, to sing for a day our merry child- 
song, our song of the ample years; for a day, 
and then again to enter the Sea. But to us there 
come divine memories, inspired moments when 
above our own virile song of youth we hear that 
serene chant of the ocean of Love, that Song of 
the Eternal. 

The saga of the Boulder — How it was chip- 
ped from its Spartan mother Ledge in that 
Far-off Time by the inexorable frozen river 
which came out of the Polar Sea. Child of the 
Ledge, it saw the last of the great Reptile tribes ; 
saw the sequoia, the cypress and magnolia re- 
place the ancient jungle; trembled under the 
tread of the vast herds of mastodon and saw the 
rhinoceros wallow in the swamp. And then the 
slow, crushing, irresistible advent of the frozen 
river — a moving wall of ice, mile high, which 



64 As Nature Whispers. 

buried the forest and tore the Boulder from its 
mother Ledge, and carried it on its back high in 
air, there for untold wintry ages to look out over 
the frozen wastes; for all companions the winds 
and stars, and always the endless billowy sea of 
ice slowly moving southward. 

The Saga of the Winds — Of the Northwind 
singing of musk-ox and caribou, of the snowy 
owl and the white ptarmigan — the Northwind 
which sports with icebergs; of the Southwincl 
singing of the birth of coral islands and the 
tropic dream of the cocoanut palm, or again of 
mockingbirds and woods glowing with the 
rhododendron. The unfavorable Winds are 
given to us tied in a bag, but like the stupid sail- 
ors of Ulysses we go to tampering with the bag 
when the Captain is asleep, and so they get loose 
and whisk us about. And it's all because of our 
meddling — for y£olus gave us the fair Winds to 
blow us home, and we had but to keep the bag 
shut on the rest. It is always an Age of Fable 
and all our experiences are parables. Being but 
poor interpreters as yet we sometimes miss the 
moral. None the less iEolus gave us the fair 
Winds to blow us home, and who knows when 
the Southwind may not carry to our listening 
ears some sweet strains of the mockingbird and 
waft us faint perfume of southern roses? And 
if the Northwind drift icebergs upon us, have 
we not within us the Immortal Fire? Perhaps 



As Nature Whispers. 65 

we may still get the unruly Winds which have 
caused the tempest back into the bag, and so put 
an end to the commotion. It is significant that 
they could be contained within the compass of 
one small bag, whereas no end of bags could pos- 
sibly contain the fair Winds of ^Eolus. 

Ah those fair Winds, those fair Winds — if we 
but set our sails they carry us while we sleep. 
Already has the Westwind stirred in us the free- 
dom of the Plains. Who knows what still finer 
strains it may bring to our listening ears; with 
what robust measure the Northwind may inspire 
us. If our sails are set upon what a golden 
strand may we come at last. 

It is an heroic life, this of the ledge and boul- 
der and forest tree, of the mountains and the 
sea, and it inspires resolute thought. It sweeps 
us out of our peck measure into the elemental, 
the vast and Titanic. The contemplation of so 
vast an arena, of such herculean figures, imparts 
to our present consciousness some ruggedness 
and strength and largeness, as though we should 
wield the hammer of Thor and be ourselves the 
heroes of an old-time saga. 

As for the Sun, it is doubtless somewhere 
within our estate and rises and sets on the hori- 
zon of our thought. Perhaps this outer orb is 
but the reflection of that radiant center in Man. 
We have this as evidence, that when this center 
is obscured we can detect but a rushlight there 



66 As Nature Whispers. 

in the sky. We must carry our own sunshine. 
Those who do not are but feebly warmed at best 
and give off no more kindly warmth than does 
a glacier. Perhaps this too is the work of the 
Wizard. Howbeit there appears to be no coun- 
ter-charm, — nothing that will offset the lack of 
sunshine. We shall freeze in the simmering 
deserts if this inner Sun be observed. 

Fog and moonlight each envelop the land in 
mystery — sign perhaps that all mystery is but 
a befogging of our minds, a sort of moonshine 
and bewilderment which gives way before the 
Sun's clear beams. Sunshine and moon- 
light then are antithetical in us as well 
as in nature. We are children of the Sun, 
not of the Moon. Symbol is he of Life. It may 
be we are stablished after all in the Sun; have 
there our Life, and these are but our shadows 
projected here on Earth. Who loves the Sun 
loves Truth. Let us go bareheaded and with the 
sun in our faces. Our thoughts will grow ruddy 
while our faces tan. 

Moon-worship, Mammon-worship, Myth-wor- 
ship — it's much the same thing; so likewise Sun- 
worship, Spirit-worship, Truth-worship. There 
is the same difference between Sun-worshippers 
and Moon-worshippers that there is between 
sunflowers and moonflowers. One is lusty, ro- 
bust, light-loving; the other a pale eerie creature 
Unfolding by night and hiding away by day. 

(LofC. 



As Nature Whispers. 67 

Superstition centers around the Moon. But 
Sun-worshippers need have no fear. It is but a 
little round ball after all — much like a dried pea. 
Yet it has a weird effect upon the waters; it is 
very much like witchcraft. Much like enchant- 
ment, too, is its marvelous transforming power, 
bathing in beauty the dreariest landscape. 

We commonly spend our days in a mental fog; 
so much so that when Light does break in upon 
us the occasion is memorable ever after. They 
who have seen it for a day at a time appear to 
walk apart from mankind by reason of it, and 
are only dimly seen through the fog, looming 
vague and undefined but landmarks none the less. 
For the transient gleams that come to all men 
make them brothers of the prophet. It is but one 
Sun, one fog. We are bewildered in the common 
mist ; we get our bearings from the selfsame Sun. 

When we ascend above the fog and look down 
over it in the light of the rising or setting Sun, it 
is no longer a bewilderment but a pearl-mist we 
see — a rose-tinted wonder. It is much the same 
with our mental fogs. When at last we rise 
above them, they glisten somewhat in the sun- 
shine — in that finer sunlight of the Spirit — and 
no longer seem the cold dreary waste they did 
when once we wandered in them, forgetful that 
the Sun still shone overhead. 

Always the setting Sun draws us ; it is a lode- 
stone to us, and as we gaze it is to feel as though 



68 As Nature Whispers. 

we would pass through our eyes into that mys- 
terious vortex of color wherein the Sun disap- 
pears as through a golden gate, beckoning us to 
follow. Westward go our thoughts. We yearn 
to follow into that golden gate of the West. But 
it is ever beyond — and still beyond, that Golden 
West which draws us. We may go westward to 
the Plains — our sunset is beyond in the hills. 
We may follow to the shores of the Pacific — it 
sinks yonder in the burnished sea. It is not of 
the earth — this Golden West for which we yearn, 
— no more are we. It is a more subtle attraction 
than we dream of; a finer call than any we hear 
with our ears. Is it memory or prophecy that is 
awakened as we look? This Beyond is but the 
unexplored of our selves; this Golden Gate, the 
gate of our destiny. In the sign and portent of 
the sunset we read compensation, fruition, com- 
pletion. So shall we ever be drawn. The Sun 
never sets on our hopes. 

Above us float the clouds like moods, fancies, 
visions of our own. This emptiness over our 
heads is to us apparently tender, sympathetic, 
companionable. Who has not felt the compan- 
ionship of the sky, its balm, its restfulness? 
Whence this tenderness if not projected forth 
from our own inner selves? It is we who shape 
the dome; we who paint it blue. Yonder is no 
dome, no blue, — but space and floating dust 
specks. But even such the Soul invests with 



As Nature Whispers. 69 

beauty and links them to the life of man. We 
are kin to the Magician; we too are miracle 
workers. But we sleep, we sleep; these many- 
ages we have slept, and our little life is what we 
dream. When shall we awake to Life itself? 
When we prefer ever another's good to our own. 
When our life itself becomes a love-motif. When 
in us thrills humanity's heart — its measureless 
sympathy and joy and tenderness. When we 
take the round world into our hearts as already 
we have taken the star-eyed dandelions and the 
lisping warblers, — not till then; for even Death 
does not awaken. Life, not Death, is the 
liberator. 

This tenderness in Nature is sign and symbol 
only. We see our own depths in the sky, but 
without recognition. These voices of the se 
the woods, the river — they are the songs of our 
prehistoric, primeval life; again the prophetic 
chant of the Soul, the serene, the _ unfettered. 
Nature rests in God and is rhythmic with uncon- 
scious rhythm. So do we become rhythmic and 
harmonious as we find our life in God, in Love — 
consciously rhythmic; and this is the rational 
consciousness. The Earth sings — sounds its 
key-note as it spins, like the humming of a Ti- 
tanic top. Oak, aspen, pine — to each its song. 
The solitary pine — large and primeval — sings a 
free and heroic song. They have their winter- 
song, their spring-song and the song of mid- 



70 As Nature Whispers. 

summer days. Rhythmic are the wheatfields; 
rhythmic the cornfields when the corn is in the 
ear. The Cosmos is singing — resounds from end 
to end with the mighty reverberations of Har- 
mony itself; it is as rhythmic with the music of 
the spheres as are autumn fields with the reverie 
of crickets. Yet 'tis compassed in the Soul — 
receives there the divine impress. There is but 
one motif; from the call of the hyla to the 
mother's Lullaby — but one motif. It is in our 
dreams we hear discords. When we awake it is 
into this Song of Life — and to find ourselves 
singing. 



[the end.] 



Where Dwells t(e Soul Serene. 

By STANTON KIRKHAM DAVIS. 

Cloth and Gold, ... $1.25, post-paid. 





CONTBN TS 


: 


I. 


Elements of Freedom. 


X. 


Wealth. 


II. 


The Ideal of Culture. 


XI. 


True Aims. 


III. 


The Idea of Religion. 


XII. 


Higher Laws. 


IV. 


The Nature of Prayer. 


XIII. 


The Soul of Nature ; 


V. 


Practical Idealism. 




Introduction. 


VI. 


The Significance of Thought. 




Spring. 


VII. 


Character and Its Expression 




Summer. 


VIII. 


The Beauty of Poise. 




Autumn. 


IX. 


Ethical Relations. 




Winter. 



THIS book is written from the standpoint of an eminently 
practical Idealism, and from the ground that the perception 
of the Soul is the basis of freedom, and thence of all true culture. 
The key-note of the book is Love — the love of God, the love of 
man, the love of Nature; but this is Religion, and thus is it a plea 
for all that is true and vital in religion: religion not for set times 
and set places, but for all days and all times — the religion of 
Love. A free and rugged spirit pervades the book; it radiates 
healthy for it was written in the open air and constantly suggests 
the woods and fields. It has force and originality and grace of 
style: a sound and wholesome book, full of love and good sense. 
Above all, it is serene and hopeful, and from beginning to end is 
suggestive of peace. It is an antidote for the fever and unrest of 
the times, and carries the reader to the unexplored recesses of his 
own being and sets him to vibrating with the Real. 



THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

569 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y. 



wtiere Dwells me Soul Serene. 



COMMENTS OF THE PRESS. 

"Stanton Kirkham Davis has succeeded in an emi- 
nent degree in bringing his philosophic discussions 
within the easy grasp of the busy man of affairs who 
has little time for calm and serious contemplation. 

* * * * It is an appeal to all that is best in man's 
nature, and seldom have I read so rational a presenta- 
tion of the ethical needs of to-day as is here presented. 

* * * The closing division of the volume would make 
a charming little work in itself, and one that would be 
prized by all lovers of Nature and of the beautiful in 
literature. * * * The author's portrayal of the Sea- 
sons will delight all lovers of fine prose poetry. It re- 
veals the mind of the careful student of Nature and the 
imagination of the artist and poet. It suggests at times 
some of the best flights of Victor Hugo: it has also 
something of the rugged quality of Walt Whitman. 

* * * The author is clearly not only a philosopher 
and teacher : he is a poet and an artist. Thjs is a book 
that merits wide circulation. No one can read it with- 
out being made healthier, saner, and happier for its 
perusal." — The Arena. 

" * * A work that will add much to the spiritual 
enlightenment of humanity. It should be widely read 
and studied."— World's Advance Thought. 

"Stanton Kirkham Davis has put into words in his 
'Where Dwells the Soul Serene' the thoughts that 
come— at least some of them— to the rest of us in 
broken waves of feeling: which pile up in the moods 
of life in high walls of foam only to break in spray and 



Press Comments — Continued. 

vanish again. But here they are caught and confined. 
* * * His philosophy therefore is not that of conflict 
and wrestling, but of healing and salvation. 

"The style in which this unpretending book is written 
has a touch of Emerson about it — sometimes a glimpse 
of Ruskin. Poet, philosopher, and Nature-lover is the 
writer, and he gives to his Soul of Nature — a mono- 
logue on the seasons — a charming and original revela- 
tion." — Minneapolis Times. 

"A book that gladdens the heart with its wealth of 
good tidings. And these tidings are told in a way that 
reveals the philosopher, the poet whose nature has 
opened to Nature's God. 

"It is fragrant with messages from the heart of 
Truth, spoken so buoyantly, pungently, and knowingly 
that all kindred souls will in the reading rejoice with 
the author. We enter with him the realm of true 
thoughts, ideas, emotions; we tread pathways flower- 
lined. 

"It is one of the highest expressions of appreciation 
of God's universe that we have read. 

"Individual in every phase of its expression, the 
book passes straight to central realities and in speaking 
of the circumferences of life illumines them by its 
trenchant truthfulness. 

"It is one of the most substantial among the modern 
helps to genuine spiritual thinking." — Boston Ideas. 

"His thoughts issue from him with much imaginative 
freshness and with frequent strength. * * * 

" 'The Soul of Nature' is primarily a lesson in the 
proper way of approaching Nature, and with the high 
ethical mood of Emerson toward the outer world com- 
bines a minuteness and intimacy of acquaintance dis- 
tinctly reminding of Thoreau." — Baltimore Sun. 



Press Comments — Continued. 

"A book that vibrates the highest chord of perception. 
One can almost feel the winds sweep over the Elysian 
fields, and hear the ^Eolian harp thrill its divine an- 
thems. * * * His word-pictures of the seasons 
lighten our burdens, heighten our stature and gladden 
us with scenes that he has well interpreted." — Indiana 
Book Review. 

"One of the best books it has been the privilege of the 
reviewer to read for many days. It is a rift of light 
along the soul's pathway to liberty and peace, a verita- 
ble benediction. * * * 

"The author has taken firm hold upon the realities of 
the Unseen, and here is his strength. He has brought 
to his task a keen scholarship, a ripe judgment and a 
simplicity of soul truly charming. * * * 

"It were indeed a difficult task to open the book 
anywhere and not find a gem.'' — Light of Truth. 

"The spirit of the New Thought permeates every 
sentence of this delightful book. It leaves one re- 
freshed as if from some cool sparkling well of life's 
purest draughts. Every one who is seeking peace, 
harmony, contentment, will be aided by its perusal. For 
teachers it has an extra charm and its perusal by them 
is worth a post-graduate course." — The Columbian. 

"The volume is full of hope and strength for the 
reader who will accept its teachings. It ought to carry 
inspiration to many world-weary people." — Toledo 
Blade. 

"It is a thoughtful, useful volume." — Boston Times. 

"To dwell with serenity is a state worth reading 
many books for, and Mr. Davis says many wise and 
true things in a lucid style." — Hartford Conrant. 

"It is to radiate health and serenity, to stimulate faith 
and offer a tonic to indifference that this book has been 



Press Comments— Continued. 

written. Even the casual reader will see that the work 
is worth while. * * * * Very much of inspiration 
is to be gotten from pages like this. The author has 
evidently read widely, pondered deeply, and that he is 
able to think somewhat originally and write exceedingly 
well his readers will readily grant." — Boston Budget. 

"Of all the New Thought publications which have 
yet appeared it would be difficult to find a book con- 
taining more wealth of thought than this. Sound in its 
philosophy, lofty in its aspirations, clear seeing and in- 
tuitive in its perceptions of the highest possibilities for 
man, its pages are filled with wisdom which must prove 
helpful to every reader. We congratulate the author 
upon havng given to the world a work which will be 
valued throughout the century."— Herald of the Golden 
Age. 

"A bracing analysis of spiritual freedom and a keen 
commentary on man's relation to God and Nature. 
Many important truths are stated with power." — 
Gloucester Times. 

"The author shows throughout a fine culture, which 
illumines his thought and makes it weightier. The 
book is worth reading by all who care for higher 
things." — Pittsburgh Post. 

"We are charmed with this book. 'The Ideal of 
Culture' and 'Character and its Expression' are essays 
that are alone worth many times the price of the book 
to the reader." — Southern Star. 



Address all orders to 
THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

S69 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. V. 



WORKS BY §§g BROBIE HTTEWIL 
Dominion and Power. 

\N IMPORTANT VOLUME OF 

STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL- SCIENCE. 

This is a large work, probably the most comprehensive of this 
author's publications, embracing an epitome of the New Thought 
teaching on every subject of vital moment in human development. 
It is indispensable to all who desire accurate knowledge of the JNew 
Metaphysical Movement. Following is a list of the subjects dis- 
cussed, an appropriate " Meditation " being appended to most of 
the chapters: 

The Secret of Power. Hope in Character Building. 

Three Planes of Develop- Love in Character Building. 
ment. Prayer. 

The Tree of Knowledge. Breath. 

The Purpose of Life. Success. 

The Mistakes of Life. The Equality of the SEXEf. 

Finding One's Self. Marriage. 

How to Conserve Force. The Rights of Childrhi. 

Faith in Character Build- Immortality. 

ING . Dominion and Power. 

PRICE, $1.00, POST-PAID. 



The Will to be Well. 

This work relates chiefly to the healing aspect— philosophy and 
practise-of Spiritual Science. It throws much new light on the 
path through which alone Health, Happiness, and Success in all 
legitimate undertakings are to be secured, and discusses in addition 
a number of topics pertaining to the New Thought teaching in gen- 
eral. Some of the chapters bear the following titles : 
What the New Thought Things Worth Remember- 

Stands For. inc. 

The Laws of Health. The Mission of Jesus. 

Mental Influences. The Law of Attraction. 

The Unity of Life. Man: Past, Present, AMD 

Demand and Supply. Future. 

Freedom— Individual and The Religion of Christ. 

Universal. The Crusade against CHRii- 

Hearing and Doing. tian Science. 

Spiritual Treatment. The Dawn of a New Age. 

PRICE, $1.00, POST-PAID. 



«5-Each of the above w«rks comprises over 200 pagas and 
is beautifully bound in cloth and gold. 

THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

569 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 



"THE WORLD'S LEADING REVIEW" 

*ff\e g A TWENTIETH 

CENTURY 
MAGAZINE OP 
VITAL THOUGHT. 



MP* 



( CHARLE 
3 B. O. FL 
} JOHN EJV 



CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON 

Editors -J b. o. flower 

EMERY ricLEAN 



Since September, 1899, THE ARENA has been published in 
New York, and under its new ownership and editorial management 
has begun a new era of its history, better equipped than ever to pre- 
sent to inquiring minds the ripest thought on all sides of the vital 
questions of the day. 

It is an absolutely free and independent journal of the first class. 
Progressive and vigorous, yet scholarly and high toned, it should be 
read by every one desirous of obtaining up-to-date information from 
the pens of the best writers. It is indispensable to every advanced 
mind. 

As an influential, thought-building force in the Reform Movement 
of this intellectual age— Social, Political, Economic, Ethical, Relig- 
ious— THE ARENA'S contributions are derived only from author- 
itative sources. Among its special features are "Topics of the 
Times," "Books of the Day," and "Conversations" with dis- 
tinguished personages, accompanied with portraits and biographical 
sketches. 

"The Coming Age," which recently suspended publication, 
has been merged in THE ARENA, and the services of its late 
editor, B. O. Flower, have been acquired by that famous magazine, 
which was founded and for seven years was edited by him. 

11 2 pages monthly, large magazine size 
$2.50 a year 25 cents a copy 

For sale on all news-stands, or mailed post-paid by the publishers: 

THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING CO., 

569 Fifth Aveaue, New York, N. Y. 




HEALTH! HARMONY! HAPPINESS!" 

" MIND" 

EDITED BY 

JOHN EMERY McLEAN and CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON. 

This is the world's largest and most important review of Liberal 
and Advanced Thought. It has just entered its fifth successful 
year, and has in preparation features that will render it more attrac- 
tive than ever. Of immediate interest is the beginning, with the 
October number, of a series of portraits of New Thought leaders 
and authors, with biographic sketches and selections from their 
published works. 

Each issue is an epitome of the latest and best information obtain- 
able concerning the subjects upon which MIND is quoted as an 
authority— its special field being Progress and Research in 

Science Philosophy 

Religion Psychology 

Metaphysics Occultism - 

MIND is the acknowledged leader, in the literary world, of the 
great New Thought Movement that is characteristic of our times, 
and should be in the hands of every thinker. 

80 pages monthly, large magazine size 
$2.00 a year 20 cents a copy 

THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

569 Fifth Avenue, New York, N, Y. 



The Power of $5.00. 

TWO MAGAZINES ARE BETTER THAN ONE. 
HERE IS A SPLENDID COMBINATION OFFER. 

"Cbe Arena/' $2.50. * "IMad," $2.00. 



Regular Price for both, $4.50. 
Combination Price, - 3.00. 

For a limited period we have decided to accept joint subscrip- 
tions for Mind, the leading magazine in America devoted to 
Metaphysics, Occultism, Psychical Research, and all other phases 
of the "New Thought," and The Arena, the great American 
Review of Social Advance, at the extremely low rate of Three 
Dollars a Year, which is a saving of $1.50 on the regular sub- 
scription price. Not only new subscribers, but also those already 
on the lists of either magazine may, in renewing, take advantage 
of this splendid offer. It is believed that there are a large 
number of thoughtful readers, all over the world, who will ap- 
preciate this opportunity to pursue in The Arena the study of 
social problems suggested in Mind, and, on the other hand, to 
take up in Mind the fuller treatment of philosophic, religious, 
metaphysical, and occult matters which the special character of 
the latter publication makes possible. This offer is made for a 
limited time only, and should be taken advantage of at once. 

Two First-Class Magazines for the price of one. 

Address all communications, and 
make remittances payable to 

THE ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

569 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 



A FRll 



1902 



APR 1 1 1902 



